Breaking promises and violating trust can be costly. The United States has agreed to pay just over one billion dollars to 41 American Indian tribes. An additional 60 tribes continue to press their claims. Why? The federal government, by its own admission, has mismanaged both the monetary assets and the natural resources that it holds in trust for the tribes.

The Department of the Interior manages almost 56 million acres of trust lands and more than 100,000 leases on those lands for various uses, including housing, timber harvesting, farming, grazing, oil and gas extraction, business leasing, rights-of-way and easements. It manages about 2,500 tribal trust accounts for more than 250 tribes.

For more than a century, the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Treasury have allowed the exploitation of Indian lands, with concessions given to companies that profited from the lands without anything close to reasonable compensation being made to the tribes. Now, as terms of this settlement provide, monies from a congressionally-appropriated Judgment Fund will be used to compensate the tribes for the breach of trust claims against the government (the tribes will waive, release and dismiss their claims with prejudice). The tribes and the federal government agreed, moreover, to information sharing procedures that are intended to strengthen the management of trust assets and improve communications between tribes and the government, specifically the U.S. Department of the Interior. The settlement agreements also include dispute resolution provisions to reduce the likelihood of future litigation.

This is only part of the picture, however, as some 60 other tribes, as noted, have not participated in the settlement and continue to press their claims.

The story is far deeper than the settlement of trust and asset claims and the continued litigation would suggest. There is no price tag for taking the spirit of a people. Native Americans have been subject to a multitude of harms and indignities committed against them as official acts of government.

James Anaya, the U.N. special rapporteur on indigenous rights, has recommended that the United States return land rights to Native Americans including the Black Hills of South Dakota, where Mount Rushmore sits. He has this to say:

“It was impressed upon me that the sense of loss, alienation and indignity is pervasive throughout Indian country.”

We know that for centuries, Native Americans have been on the receiving end of some of the worst atrocities committed on U.S. soil as they were driven from their homes and isolated on reservations. How can the U.S. government repair the damage done to these communities, and compensate in some way for the injuries done to them?

We’ve been making a start, for a while. At a ceremony held in September, 2000, celebrating the one hundred seventy fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Kevin Gover, an assistant secretary of Indian Affairs for the U.S. Department of Interior, explicitly accepted responsibility on behalf of the BIA for the wrongs committed against Native Americans:

“We must first reconcile ourselves to the fact that the works of this agency have at various times profoundly harmed the communities it was meant to serve….By threat, deceit, and force, the great tribal nations were made to march 1,000 miles to the west, leaving thousands of their old, their young, and their infirm in hasty graves along the Trail of Tears…As the nation looked to the West for more land, this agency participated in the ethnic cleansing that befell the western tribes….the deliberate spread of disease, the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the use pf the poison alcohol and the cowardly killing of women an children…a tragedy on a scale so ghastly that it cannot be dismissed as merely the inevitable consequence of the clash of competing ways of life…This agency set out to destroy all things Indian…forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the conduct of traditional religious activities…made Indian people ashamed of whom they were…So many of the maladies suffered today in Indian country result from the failures of this agency... Poverty, ignorance and disease have been the product of this agency’s work.”

Govin goes on to make a commitment to the future, as follows:

“We desperately wish we could change history, but of course we cannot…Never again will this agency stand silent when hate and violence are committed against Indians….. Never again will we attack your religions, your languages, your rituals or any of your tribal ways. Never again will we teach your children to be ashamed of who they are. Never again.”

I would have been better pleased if you had never made such promises, than that you should have made them and not performed them…”Shinguaconse (“Little Pine”)

Considering the decades the tribes have waited for their compensation, and for the need to press claims to secure it, these bitter words are hardly surprising. This important settlement comes late but it has finally come, and, as noted, the funds have been appropriated. It’s about time!

When he campaigned for the presidency, Barack Obama promised to make amends and improve the relationship between Native American tribes and the US Government. He has kept his promise. With this settlement, the nation takes one more step in the right direction.

Chief James Allan, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, said that despite longstanding tensions between tribes and the federal government, the settlement represented the fairness with which the Obama administration had treated American Indians:

“He has not made treaties with us, but he gave us his word. And his word has been golden.”

There is more to do, however. Outstanding claims remain. And an additional authorized payment for a larger settlement for tribes, $3.4 billion, has not been appropriated, let alone distributed, because of several lawsuits.

“Much has been said of what you term “civilization among the Indians. Many proposals have been made to us to adopt your laws, your religion, your manners, and your customs. We do not see the propriety of such a reformation.

We should be better pleased if we could actually see the good effects of these doctrines in your own practices rather than hearing you talk about them….” Old Tasssel (Cherokee)

Honoring a contract, keeping a promise, fulfilling the terms of an agreement, those are elements embedded in our laws. Let’s follow them here, and, strengthen the initiative of the Obama Administration so that our practices align with our words. This generation must do what others have failed to do. We need to provide reasonable compensation for the violations of trust by our government. We may not be able to restore the human spirit or compensate for destroyed lives, but we can, at least, compensate tribes for our own government’s failure to honor its own legal obligations to them. In this way, we may help to restore a foundation for our Native American brothers and sisters, to, once again, "walk the trail of life" as they wish.